Friday afternoon, I called JL at work in a panic. Something caught my eye by the hardwood floors and the wood accent on the wall. With a closer inspection, I saw squirmy white worm-like things. I swept them up, took some photos (I will spare you) and kept looking for more. I was disgusted by finding some additional ones. When JL came home from work, we were not able to find any more. I looked online to see if I could identify what had to be some kind of larvae. It seemed like it was probably powderpost beetle larvae. They basically love moist wood. This summer has been extremely wet and our basement flooded two weeks ago thanks to city sewer issues. When reading more about them, it says that they are very distructive over time and usually are not found until people see the damage. Aside from a few exit holes, and wood dust piles in the basement nothing is very clear to our eyes.

This Labor Day weekend has been painfully slow watching, waiting and cleaning to inspect more. Tuesday morning we will have to call an exterminator to come and see what to do. We clearly have a current infestation and need to get it under control. What we will not know until someone comes is what real damage has already been done. Thanks to this wait, my mind is going a mile a minute:

• Is our furniture infested?
• Will we need to strip off parts of the floor?
• Will we need to vacate the house to fumigate?
• How much is this going to cost?
• Can these beetles really be controlled?
• Did they start from new wood that was added to our walls/kitchen when it was remodeled?
• WHY now of all times?

I literally had all of this and more going through my mind last night. Of course finding more of the larvae in the dining room, hall way and our bedroom pushed it over the edge. I cried and rocked myself to sleep for maybe two hours and then was wide awake and crying again. All I could think about were these nasty, gross beetles destroying our house, furniture and other items.

Lots of cleaning and laundry was done today and more will need to be done tomorrow. With any luck, we can get someone here quickly, but we have no clue who to contact since we have never had this before. *sigh*

Thanks to this, I am hereby declaring war on the beetles and other creepy crawly, disgusting things that live and destroy items within my house.